In ’79, he had a breakout season, being awarded the Sporting News’s NL ROY. Then in 1980 expectations were high, but he regressed petty badly, leading the Astros to think he wasn’t part of their future and that he’d never develop and they needed to dump him on some other team.

Remember, that was a Houston club who’d forced a 1 game playoff with the Dodgers and were looking to reach the World Series in 1981. They couldn’t have a .213 hitter with a pithetic .274 OBP messing up their chances everyday.

Fortunately the Giants had a player they wanted to dump too, a discontented first baseman by the name of Mike Ivie. So on April 20, 1981, the Astros traded Jeff Leonard to the Giants for a discontented first baseman. That made the trade work for both teams, and they probably both figured they were dumping a never-will-be onto a division rival.

As soon as Jeff was a Giant, they assigned him to their AAA club in Phoenix where he promptly smacked the ball around batting .401 and slugging over .600! Yeah, this is that same player Houston didn’t think would be worth keepin’ around.

After the ’81 strike, Jeff was recalled to the majors and became a regularly important part of the Giants offense. In just 140 plate appearances, he earned 1.8 WAR (Wins Above Replacement Player), which ain’t too shabby.

So then ’82 comes around, and expectations are high for Jeff again….just like a year earlier. This time, Jeff started the year out hot despite the Giants struggling to win games.

On April 25th, the Giants went into their game against their longtime rival Dodgers with a mere 4-10 record and trying to stop a 5 game losing streak. By the 8th inning, they were losing again, 3-2, when Jeff came up to the plate with two outs & the bases loaded, and hit his 1st career grand slam! Giants win.

Unfortunately, just a few days after that, Jeff injured his hand diving for a ball in the outfield and would barely play again until July. He still didn’t really get his swing back ’til September though. If we split up his season stats, you can see just how hard the injury affected his whole season—

From that, we can conclude that if he didn’t injure his hand, he probably would’ve batted around .305 for the whole season, and slugged around .460. Although, we’ll never know.

What we do know though, is that when he got hot, the Giants got hot.

This is important, because as was recently pointed out, this was a great division race. In what was largely a division race between the Braves and the Braves and the Atlanta Braves, with the Dodgers sneaking in there. The Giants started slippin into the mix too in September, by going 23-10 after August 27.

What makes this incredibly interesting, is the fact the Giants ended up only 2 games back of the division title when all was said and done. It raises a bunch of questions like — Would the Giants have won just 3 more games during the summer if Jeff Leonard didn’t injure his hand and miss 82 games of the season? If the Giants won the division, could they have beaten the Cardinals or Brewers in the postseason? If the Giants had made the playoffs or won the World Series, would they have still chose to rebuild? Would they have chose to try to keep the winning ways going by signing expensive free agents, or making different trades? How could that have affected the entire National League through the 1980′s?

All the Giants needed was 3 games.

Leading up to 1982, the Giants had produced only 3 winning seasons in their past 10 years. They were 1 game over .500 in ’81, but they were an aging team. In 1982, 5 of the 9 Giants to play in 100+ games, were 31 years old or older. They needed to get younger, and they had a load of talent in their AAA club in Phoenix to bring into San Francisco.

Almost the entire roster of the 1981 Phoenix Giants made it to the major leagues at some point in their career. Which makes me wonder… were there any “future stars” who had better careers than Bob Brenly, Chili Davis, or Bob Tufts?

Let’s see now, Bob Brenly was 28 in ’82, pretty old for a “future star”. He became the regular catcher for the Giants through much of the 80′s and posted a career 106 OPS+ over his 2,995 PA’s in 9 seasons. He was definitely a future star, even if he was already old for a rookie There was only 1 non-pitcher on the team who’d go on to have longer career and not played significant time in the majors yet. That other player, is the next guy on this card—

Chili Davis. He went on to be a star in the majors. For his career, he hit .274/.360/.451 and posted a 120 OPS+, winning 2 World Series rings, one with the ’91 Twins and the other with the ’99 Yankees. Oh, and he was a 4 time All-Star and smacked 350 HR’s and drove in 1,372 RBI’s. I call that a nice career. He was 120% future star in ’82.

How about Bob Tufts? Well, his ’81 record in AAA was 9-2, 1.70 ERA. There wasn’t a better pitcher on the team under 36. None of the pitchers, including Bob Tufts, really had anything resembling a decent career in the majors. So I guess he was really the only other option for Topps to put on this card. Tufts did help San Francisco improve though, as he was part of a trade for Atlee Hammaker just before the ’82 season began. Atlee played for over a decade in the big leagues, mostly for the Giants.

The lack of future stars in the Giants farm system quickly became apparent after ’82. San Francisco wouldn’t see another .500 season ’til 1986, including enduring a 100 loss season. The Giants couldn’t even get anything from the draft. When they chose future major leaguers Barry Bonds, Pete Incaviglia, & Jody Reed, in the June ’82 draft, neither signed.

By the end of the 1980′s though, the Giants were a force to be reckoned with in the NL West. From ’86-’90, the Giants would put together 5 consecutive winning seasons, including division titles in ’87 & ’89, and a trip to the ’89 World Series.

His final season was 1981, and he didn’t get much playing time and only hit .230/.264/.264. I couldn’t find any record of him playing anywhere in ’82, but he was in AAA Witchita the following year before his playing days were over.

He did have his moments in ’81 though. Like on May 30, in a long 14 inning contest at Candlestick with the Astros visiting. Rennie scored 2 runs, and drove in another 2 more.

The back of this card also mentions he smacked a 6th inning home run on April 12, helping beat the Padres. I don’t think that’s as good a highlight as the Astros game I just referred to though. I mean, HR’s are good stats, but don’t you think that if a guy is directly involved with 4 runs, it’s much better than being involved with only 1? Call me silly, but that makes more sense to me on a very basic level.

The look on his face in this card seems to reflect his unease with where his career is at. There’s just this look of a lack of confidence in himself and hoping he can just keep from making the last out, but trying not to think about it. A slight reflection of hesitation in his eyes. Trying to focus on the ball and rid himself of his nerves.